No Longer at Ease (8 page)

The whole family sat round the enormous parlor table with the ancient hurricane lamp in the center. There were nine people in all—father, brother, six sisters, and Obi. When his father called out the portion for the day from the
Scripture Union Card, Obi had impressed himself by finding it without difficulty in the Bible which he shared with Eunice. Prayers were then said for the opening of the eyes, and the reading began, each person reading one verse in turn.

Obi’s mother sat in the background on a low stool. The four little children of her married daughters lay on the mat by her stool. She could read, but she never took part in the family reading. She merely listened to her husband and children. It had always been like that as far as the children could remember. She was a very devout woman, but Obi used to wonder whether, left to herself, she would not have preferred telling her children the folk stories that her mother had told her. In fact, she used to tell her eldest daughters stories. But that was before Obi was born. She stopped because her husband forbade her to do so.

“We are not heathens,” he had said. “Stories like that are not for the people of the Church.”

And Hannah had stopped telling her children folk stories. She was loyal to her husband and to her new faith. Her mother had joined the Church with her children after her husband’s death. Hannah had already grown up when they ceased to be “people of nothing” and joined the “people of the Church.” Such was the confidence of the early Christians that they called the others “the people of nothing” or sometimes, when they felt more charitable, “the people of the world.”

Isaac Okonkwo was not merely a Christian; he was a catechist. In their first years of married life he made Hannah see the grave responsibility she carried as a catechist’s wife.
And as soon as she knew what was expected of her she did it, sometimes showing more zeal than even her husband. She taught her children not to accept food in neighbors’ houses because she said they offered their food to idols. That fact alone set her children apart from all others for, among the Ibo, children were free to eat where they liked. One day a neighbor offered a piece of yam to Obi, who was then four years old. He shook his head like his older and wiser sisters, and then said: “We don’t eat heathen food.” His sister Janet tried too late to cover his mouth with her hand.

But there were occasional setbacks in this crusade. A year or two later when Obi had begun to go to school, such a setback did take place. There was one lesson which he loved and feared. It was called “Oral.” During this period the teacher called on any pupil to tell the class a folk story. Obi loved these stories but he knew none which he could tell. One day the teacher called on him to face the class and tell them a story. As he came out and stood before them he trembled.

“
Olulu ofu oge
,” he began in the tradition of folk tales, but that was all he knew. His lips quivered but no other sounds came out. The class burst into derisive laughter, and tears filled his eyes and rolled down his cheeks as he went back to his place.

As soon as he got home he told his mother about it. She told him to be patient until his father went to the evening prayer meeting.

Some weeks later Obi was called up again. He faced the class boldly and told one of the new stories his mother had
told him. He even added a little touch to the end which made everyone laugh. It was the story of the wicked leopardess who wanted to eat the young lambs of his old friend the sheep. She went to the sheep’s hut when she knew she had gone to market and began to search for the young lambs. She did not know that their mother had hidden them inside some of the palm-kernels lying around. At last she gave up the search and brought two stones to crack some of the kernels and eat before going, because she was very, very hungry. As soon as she cracked the first, the nut flew into the bush. She was amazed. The second also flew into the bush. And the third and eldest not only flew into the bush but, in Obi’s version, slapped the leopardess in the eyes before doing so.

“You say you have only four days to stay with us?”

“Yes,” said Obi. “But I will do my best to come again within a year. I must be in Lagos to see about getting a job.”

“Yes,” said his father slowly. “A job is the first thing. A person who has not secured a place on the floor should not begin to look for a mat.” After a pause he said: “There are many things to talk about, but not tonight. You are tired and need sleep.”

“I am not very tired, Father. But perhaps it is better to talk tomorrow. There is one thing, however, about which you should have a restful mind. There will be no question of John not finishing his course at the Grammar School.”

“Good night, my son, and God bless you.”

“Good night, Father.”

He borrowed the ancient hurricane lamp to see his way to his room and bed. There was a brand-new white sheet on the old wooden bed with its hard grass-filled mattress. The pillow slips with their delicate floral designs were no doubt Esther’s work. “Good old Esther!” Obi thought. He remembered when he was a little boy and Esther had just become a teacher. Everyone said that she should no longer be called Esther because it was disrespectful, but Miss. So she was called Miss. Sometimes Obi forgot and called her Esther, whereupon Charity told him how rude he was.

In those days Obi got on very well with his three eldest sisters, Esther, Janet, and Agnes, but not with Charity, who was his immediate elder. Charity’s Ibo name was “A girl is also good,” but whenever they quarreled Obi called her “A girl is not good.” Then she would beat him until he cried unless their mother happened to be around, in which case Charity would postpone the beating. She was as strong as iron and was feared by other children in the neighborhood, even the boys.

Obi did not sleep for a long time after he had lain down. He thought about his responsibilities. It was clear that his parents could no longer stand on their own. They had never relied on his father’s meager pension. He planted yams and his wife planted cassava and coco yams. She also made soap from leachings of palm ash and oil and sold it to the villagers for a little profit. But now they were too old for these things.

“I must give them a monthly allowance from my salary.” How much? Could he afford ten pounds? If only he did not
have to pay back twenty pounds a month to the Umuofia Progressive Union. Then there was John’s school fees.

“We’ll manage somehow,” he said aloud to himself. “One cannot have it both ways. There are many young men in this country today who would sacrifice themselves to get the opportunity I have had.”

Outside a strong wind had suddenly arisen and the disturbed trees became noisy. Flashes of lightning showed through the jalousie. It was going to rain. Obi liked rain at night. He forgot his responsibilities and thought about Clara, how heavenly it would be on such a night to feel her cool body against his—the shapely thighs and the succulent breasts.

Why had she said he should not tell his parents about her yet? Could it be that her mind was still not made up? He would have liked to tell his mother at least. He knew she would be overjoyed. She once said she would be ready to depart when she had seen his first child. That was before he went to England; it must have been when Esther’s first child was born. She now had three, Janet two, Agnes one. Agnes would have had two if her first child had lived. It must be dreadful to lose one’s first child, especially for a little girl like Agnes; she was no more than a little girl really at the time she got married—in her behavior at least. Even now, she still had not quite grown up. Her mother always told her so. Obi smiled in the darkness as he remembered the little incident after prayers an hour or two ago.

Agnes had been asked to carry the little children, who were already asleep on the floor, to their beds.

“Wake them up to urinate first or they will do it in their beds,” said Esther.

Agnes grabbed the first child by the wrist and pulled him up.

“Agnes! Agnes!” screamed their mother, who was sitting on a low stool beside the sleeping children, “I have always said that your head is not correct. How often must I tell you to call a child by name before waking him up?”

“Don’t you know,” Obi took up, pretending great anger, “that if you pull him up suddenly his soul may not be able to get back to his body before he wakes?”

The girls laughed. Obi had not changed a bit. He enjoyed teasing them, their mother not excepted. She smiled.

“You may laugh if laughter catches you,” she said indulgently. “It does not catch me.”

“That is why Father calls them the foolish virgins,” said Obi.

It was now beginning to rain with thunder and lightning. At first large raindrops drummed on the iron roof. It was as though thousands of pebbles, each wrapped separately in a piece of cloth to break its fall, had been let loose from the sky. Obi wished that it was daytime so that he could see a tropical rain once more. It was now gathering strength. The drumming of large single drops gave way to a steady downpour.

“I had forgotten it could rain so heavily in November,” he thought as he rearranged his loincloth to cover his whole
body. Actually such rain was unusual. It was as though the deity presiding over the waters in the sky found, on checking his stock and counting off the months on his fingers, that there was too much rain left and that he had to do something drastic about it before the impending dry season.

Obi composed himself and went off to sleep.

C
HAPTER
S
EVEN

Obi’s first day in the civil service was memorable, almost as memorable as his first day at the bush mission school in Umuofia nearly twenty years before. In those days white men were very rare. In fact, Mr. Jones had been the second white man Obi had set eyes on, and he had been nearly seven then. The first white man had been the Bishop on the Niger.

Mr. Jones was the Inspector of Schools and was feared throughout the province. It was said that he had fought during the Kaiser’s war and that it had gone to his head. He was a huge man, over six feet tall. He rode a motorcycle which he always left about half a mile away so that he could enter a school unannounced. Then he was sure to catch somebody committing an offense. He visited a school about once in two years and he always did something which was remembered until his next visit. Two years before, he had thrown a boy out of a window. Now it was the headmaster who got into trouble. Obi never discovered what the trouble was because it had all been done in English. Mr. Jones was red with fury as he paced up and down, taking such ample strides that at
one point Obi thought he was making straight for him. The headmaster, Mr. Nduka, was all the while trying to explain something.

“Shut up!” roared Mr. Jones, and followed it up with a slap. Simeon Nduka was one of those people who had taken to the ways of the white man rather late in life. And one of the things he had learnt in his youth was the great art of wrestling. In the twinkling of an eye Mr. Jones was flat on the floor and the school was thrown into confusion. Without knowing why, teachers and pupils all took to their heels. To throw a white man was like unmasking an ancestral spirit.

That was twenty years ago. Today few white men would dream of slapping a headmaster in his school and none at all would actually do it. Which is the tragedy of men like William Green, Obi’s boss.

Obi had already met Mr. Green that morning. As soon as he had arrived he had been taken in to be introduced to him. Without rising from his seat or offering his hand Mr. Green muttered something to the effect that Obi would enjoy his work, one, if he wasn’t bone-lazy, and two, if he was prepared to use his loaf. “I’m assuming you have one to use,” he concluded.

A few hours later he appeared in Mr. Omo’s office, where Obi had been posted for the day. Mr. Omo was the Administrative Assistant. He had put nearly thirty years’ service into thousands of files, and would retire, or so he said, when his son had completed his legal studies in England. Obi was spending his first day in Mr. Omo’s office to learn a few things about office administration.

Mr. Omo jumped to his feet as soon as Mr. Green came in. Simultaneously he pocketed the other half of the kola nut he was eating.

“Why hasn’t the Study Leave file been passed to me?” Mr. Green asked.

“I thought …”

“You are not paid to think, Mr. Omo, but to do what you are told. Is that clear? Now send the file to me immediately.”

“Yes, sir.”

Mr. Green slammed the door behind him and Mr. Omo carried the file personally to him. When he returned he began to rebuke a junior clerk who, it seemed, had caused all the trouble.

Obi had now firmly decided that he did not like Mr. Green and that Mr. Omo was one of his old Africans. As if to confirm his opinion the telephone rang. Mr. Omo hesitated, as he always did when the telephone rang, and then took it up as if it was liable to bite.

“Hello. Yes, sir.” He handed it over to Obi with obvious relief. “Mr. Okonkwo, for you.”

Obi took the telephone. Mr. Green wanted to know whether he had received a formal offer of appointment. Obi said, no, he hadn’t.